The kiosk of the Quebec editions Lux, at the Frankfurt Book Fair, has been decorated since the opening on Wednesday with hastily printed posters. “ In solidarity with Adania Shibli », we can read, in the precious place of books whose rights we want to sell to see them translated in other countries. Or “ Publishers against genocide “. The most important book fair in the world is not used to being political. The announcement of the cancellation of the ceremony planned in honor of the Palestinian author Adania Shibli changes the situation.
The LiBeraturpreis prize was to salute Günther Orth’s German translation of M.me Shibli. A novel turned into French A minor detail (Actes Sud), finalist in 2020 for the prestigious National Book Award.
However, “on October 13, Litprom, the organizers of the prize, announced that it would not be awarded during the Fair,” indicates the general director of the National Association of Book Publishers (ANEL), Karine Vachon, in a email sent to its members.
“Because of the war started by Hamas, which is causing millions of people in Israel and Palestine to suffer, the organizer Litprom has decided not to hold the ceremony at the Frankfurt Fair,” we can actually read on the organization’s website, which “is looking for an appropriate format and location[s] to hold the event later.”
According to Lux, “the organizers justified [leur] decision by affirming their desire to stand in total solidarity on the side of Israel. “This situation is highly reprehensible,” says the publisher on Facebook.
Karine Vachon’s letter also specifies that a “public discussion with Adania Shibli and her translator has also been canceled”. The reactions have been piling up ever since.
According to the email from Mme Vachon, the Arab Publishers Association, the United Arab Emirates Publishers Association, the Sharjah Book Authority and PublisHer have reportedly withdrawn from the Frankfurt Book Fair.
The director of the magazine ArabLit QuarterlyMarcia Lynx Qualey, launched a petition, which was widely circulated. The world published it Monday in French, signed by more than 600 authors, including three Nobel Prize winners in literature, Annie Ernaux, Abdulrazak Gurnah and Olga Tokarczuk.
We read that “the Fair declares that it wants to make Israeli voices ‘particularly audible’ while it reduces the space given to Palestinian voices.” The signatories affirm “loud and clear that the cancellation of cultural events is not a solution”.
The Fair, according to this petition, must “create spaces that allow Palestinian writers to share their thoughts on literature in these serious and terrible times, rather than reducing them to silence.”
The Independent Publishers Alliance also protested the cancellations. PEN America, which aims to defend freedom of expression, requested in a press release Litprom, the organizer of the prize, to reconsider postponing the ceremony.
War crime
“The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is overwhelming us all these days,” Karine Vachon ends in her email. Furthermore, “the decision to withdraw from the Fair the awarding of the prize to the Palestinian author shocks, […] and raises concerns, especially since ANEL defends freedom of expression.”
The decision to withdraw from the Fair the awarding of the prize to the Palestinian author shocks, […] and raises concerns
Born in 1974, Adania Shibli, according to Actes Sud, embodies a generation of Palestinian artists “who claim a political as well as an aesthetic commitment”. She speaks Arabic, French, English, Hebrew, Korean and German, but writes only in Arabic “because that language is witchy,” according to her Babelio profile.
A minor detail is based on a real event, the rape of a young Bedouin woman in 1949 by an Israeli army unit. The story is in two parts. One half “relates the unfolding of the crime with almost surgical objectivity”. The other part, to the “I”, in an ironic tone, is narrated by a contemporary Palestinian woman obsessed by the link between the date of the rape and her date of birth.